Is there a strong argument that survival instinct is a prerequisite for creating an AGI?
Steve Omohudro wrote a paper called Basic AI Drives that steps through why we would expect an AI with narrow goals to find some basic, general concepts as instrumentally useful for their narrow goals. 

For example, an AI designed to maximize stock market returns but whose design is silent on the importance of continuing to survive would realize that its continued survival is a key component of maximizing stock market returns, and thus take actions to keep itself operational.

In general, we should be skeptical of 'anthropomorphizing' AI and other code, but it seems like there are reasons to expect this beyond "well, humans behave this way, so it must be how all intelligence behaves."